


understanding

by tenley



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: M/M, Shotgunning, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-20
Updated: 2015-10-20
Packaged: 2018-04-27 07:41:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5039773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tenley/pseuds/tenley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>otacon can't seem to shake the residual stress from their last mission. snake has an idea.</p><p>fill for a prompt on the kink meme.</p>
            </blockquote>





	understanding

**Author's Note:**

> this is a polished version of my fill for this [prompt](http://mgs-kink.dreamwidth.org/757.html?thread=183285):
> 
> "Otasune, shotgunning.
> 
> IDC about context, honestly, but if you need a prompt: Before or after one of their first missions - Otacon has been awake for way too long, nerves too frayed to let him function as masterfully as he usually would. Snake knows about the calming effects of nicotine. But no way in hell he could get his partner to smoke himself, could he?
> 
> Could have sex or not, just gimme Dave corrupting the lungs of his partner through lingering, smoky kisses that get right into his neural system."
> 
> i wrote this fill on my phone at like 1 am and felt it deserved a tune up so here we are have fun i guess

"You haven't slept in four days."

Startled, Hal looks up with a gasp, eyes squinting as he tries to adjust his sight from the brightness of his computer screen to the dark figure in the doorway, backlit by the weak yellow lamp in their bedroom. Dark...? Wasn't it the middle of the afternoon?  
  
"It's almost midnight," Snake says, as if he's heard Hal's thoughts, his arms crossing. He looks angry, Hal thinks grimly. Or maybe just frustrated. Worried? His perception of social cues is quite frankly shot at the moment.  
  
"Can't sleep," Hal mumbles. He gives up on trying to see Snake's face more clearly and glances back to the scrolling expanse of code on his screen. He absently tries to remember the last time he ate something. This morning? Last night? Damn. "Too anxious."

He hears Snake sigh through his nose, then yelps as the lights are flipped on. He lets out a vampiric hiss in reaction, curling into his hood, but before he can form a verbal protest he feels Snake's hand on his shoulder. When he peeks out from under his sweatshirt, he sees Snake's face, up close and personal. Hal is reminded suddenly of a moment long ago, when Snake had known nothing about him but had crowded in, close and uncomfortable, making Hal uneasy with human contact. Snake is wearing that same searching expression he'd worn when he had checked Hal for signs of Foxdie in that freezing prison. Hal had been so intimidated by him back then. Terrified, really, just like he had been of nearly everything else. It seems like a lifetime ago now.

"Anxious? What about?" Snake asks, bringing Hal out of his thoughts by rubbing affectionate circles into the space between neck and shoulder. "Hal? What are you anxious about?"

Hal hums contentedly at the touch, then sighs as he collects enough scattered brain cells to form an answer. "Just... work. Y'know." When he sets his hand down on top of Snake's and laces their fingers together, he notices his fingers are trembling. Still, he smiles wanly up at his partner, as if to assuage any concern. Judging by Snake's expression it doesn't seem to have the desired effect. Worth a shot.

"Work? We don't even have another mission planned. You haven't found any leads on our next location yet, you would've told me. What's there to be anxious about? Is an anime character having problems?" he jokes, earning a traditional punch in the arm.

Then Hal realizes, very suddenly, that this is not a question that Snake is asking out of curiosity, because Snake already knows. Snake understands what it means to go sleepless and shaking for far more than four days at a time. He isn't asking because he doesn't know the reason. He's asking so Hal will speak when speaking does not come so easily, forgone for dwelling unhealthily on the past, to the point of self destruction - a feeling he knows Snake is painfully familiar with. It's strange the way their experiences, their behaviors sometimes overlap so uncannily in spite of their fundamental differences, Hal thinks. More often than not, he tries not to think about it, because in most cases it makes him kind of sad.

But sometimes it's kind of comforting.

"Residual stress over the last time, I guess," he sighs, absently untwining his fingers from Snake's and twisting them through his hair - a nervous gesture. His brow furrows as he remembers: "Can't stop thinking about that bomb... could've lost your leg... or the security scare - sure I was able to control the situation, but what if I hadn't? And... and the way you were limping..."

"Hal," Snake cuts in, tone soft. Hal looks up at him again, meeting his eyes, expects him to chastise him for rambling, remind him that what's done is done. But then: "Did you know nicotine can be really good for stress?"

Hal reels from the strangeness of the question, brows quirked and eyes narrow in confusion. "What?" he splutters. "Are you asking if I - ?"

"No," Snake says, cutting him off again, the shadow of a grin playing at his lips. He shakes his head, amused. "No, I know I'd never get you to smoke, for all the complaining you do. But I have an idea." He takes advantage of Hal's confusion and skims his fingertips over the frames of his glasses, silently asking for permission. He takes them off when Hal nods twice, folds them neatly, places them on the coffee table.

Before Hal can say anything, Snake is gone, presumably to retrieve his pack of Lucky Strikes. Hal's mind immediately goes into overdrive, a revelation hitting him like a proverbial ton of bricks: stress. Stress is why Dave smokes. He had never thought about it like that, and feels like an idiot for never realizing it; after all the shit he's given Dave for the stench (a nuisance to Hal), all the scathing allusions to blackened lungs (a personal phobia of Hal's), how it would kill him someday (leave Hal alone again and friendless, loveless)... he had never even considered why Snake smoked in the first place until now. How typical of him to get so wrapped up in his own anxieties and emotional hangups that he would fail to consider the one person who means the most to him. How selfish. Will he ever learn to love selflessly? Christ. He sits on his hands to stop the shaking.

When Snake comes back there's an unlit cigarette in his mouth, a lighter in his hand, and an excited look on his face, almost boyish. Hal regards him wryly, wondering what he could be up to. "Sit on the couch," he says before promptly lighting up. Hal obeys, watching Snake close his eyes and sigh, expression relieved as the smoke hits his lungs. Hal smiles to himself at the sight, affection winning out over self loathing if only for a moment.

Maybe he can love as selflessly as he wants to, if he tries.

Snake throws himself onto the couch, his body turned inwards toward Hal. He plucks the cigarette out of his mouth; then, carefully, so as not to burn any skin, he grabs Hal by the ears, shifts so their lips are close together, just barely touching. Hal's eyes fall shut as he's hit suddenly by an overwhelming craving for Dave's lips on his -

And then Snake exhales.

Hal expects himself to gag or cough, but surprisingly, he doesn't - maybe he's built up a tolerance through proximity. All his paranoias about ashen lungs and chemotherapy bubble up to the surface, but Dave is there, licking at his lips, the smoke dancing between their mouths. The contrast between Dave's wet mouth and the dry smoke leaves him torn between staying and bolting.

"Inhale," Dave murmurs against Hal's stress-bitten lips, and he immediately obeys, leaning into the fingers carding through his messy hair. He feels dizzy, heady with sensation-bordering-overstimulation. His eyes fall shut, basking in the feeling, absorbing it, trying to appreciate it, to understand. He hasn't decided if he likes it yet.

When Dave pulls back to gauge his reaction, perhaps sensing his indecision, Hal moves with him, hands grasping at strong shoulders. He asks against his jawline, "Can you do that again?"

Hal loses track of time all over again, the smoke mingling between their teeth and tongues seeming to linger for hours. He remembers reading about the mouth being the most sensitive part of the human body; his lips tingle under Dave's smokey exhalations and strokes of tongue, teeth. It's strange and entirely surprising just how much he likes it - before now he had always associated smoking with shortness of breath, one of his absolute least favorite sensations. It meant panic, fear, cold and paralyzing, a horrible reminder of... of...

But it turns out to be the opposite; he decides he definitely appreciates the way the tension in his shoulders eases as the nicotine gets to his head. He wonders, briefly, if that can be attributed more to Dave's accompanying kisses than the cigarettes, before deciding not to overthink it. He distantly registers a second, a third cigarette being lit, and as the last one burns out hands start roaming his neck, his chest, his thighs. His skin feels like it's singing underneath Dave's touch. He feels so relaxed.

"Now I get it," Hal breathes as he's tipped back against the arm of the couch, hips rolling upwards against Dave's. Arousal engulfs him like slow, easy waves of sea water, soothing in its steady rhythm.

"Mm," is the only reply he gets, before Dave starts lazily pawing at his shirt, kissing at his neck, movements boneless yet somehow graceful. Hal is so hard, yet he feels no urgency - just safety, and warmth. The nicotine high leaves him floating, the scratchy upholstery nonexistent, even against the bare skin of his back, and then his thighs once Dave pulls his pants off.

He grins, wide and goofy, as Dave wraps one sweaty hand around his thigh, shoves the other in between their hips, wrapping strong fingers around the both of them as they rock together. Dave is pushing himself so close, like he can't bear for their skin to separate, like he wants Hal and himself to become the same hazy, smokey entity. Their tongues dance, lazy as their thrusts and tasting of sweet nicotine and familiarity, as Dave moans deep in his throat and Hal wraps his legs around Dave's waist. The rhythm Dave sets has the same slow, steady cadence as the waves of warmth and safety that wash over Hal, and he loses himself to it, clinging to his partner just as hard. He loses track of where Dave ends and he begins, almost believes that their sensations are one and the same, their bodies shuddering as they move together. What makes Hal happiest, though, is imagining how gratifying it must feel for Dave to share this with him.

Hal understands.


End file.
